On the Matter of ‘Contamination’: Sexual Assault and Social Disgrace in the Balladic Querellas of Doña Lambra and Doña Jimena

Abstract

For more than a century, scholars have remarked on the similar complaints of ill treatment pronounced by doña Lambra, the manipulative co-conspirator in the legendary murder of the seven Infantes from Lara, and by doña Jimena, the ideal maiden who marries the young Rodrigo Díaz in the Mocedades de Rodrigo, both of which are preserved in several ballads comprising the romancero viejo. Rather than one ballad ‘contaminating’ another—an explanation traditionally cited for the poems’ overlap—this article argues that their points of contact reflect an established association between the two women that existed in the collective imagination.

Key Words:

• Ballads
• Sixteenth-century poetry
• Contamination
• Epic
• Rape
• Sexual assault
• Dishonour
• Siete Infantes de Lara
• El Cid

Notes

1 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from these ballads have been borrowed from Romancero, ed., estudio & notas de Michelle Débax (Madrid: Alhambra, 1982). To reduce the number of notes, I reference using the line numbers as established by Débax in parentheses immediately following the quotation in the main text.

2 See, respectively: Primavera y flor de romances ó colección de los más viejos y más populares romances castellanos, ed., con intro. & notas, de Fernando José Wolf & Conrado Hofmann, 2 vols (Berlin: A. Asher & Comp., 1856), I, 103, n. 1; Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, ‘Tratado de los romances viejos. Tomo I’, in Antología de poetas líricos castellanos, ed. Enrique Sánchez Reyes, comprising vols XXII–XXV of the Edición nacional de las obras completas de Menéndez Pelayo, dir. Miguel Artigas (Madrid: CSIC, 1940–1970), XXII, 303; Romancero hispánico (hispano-portugués, americano y sefardí). Teoría e historia, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 2 vols (Madrid: Espasa, 1968 [1^st ed. 1953]), II, 74; and Paul Bénichou, ‘El casamiento del Cid’, in Homenaje a Amado Alonso, I, ed. Alfonso Reyes, Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 7:1–2 (1953), 316–36 (p. 326).

3 Menéndez Pelayo, ‘Tratado de los romances viejos’, ed. Sánchez Reyes, I, 303; original emphasis.

4 Diego Catalán, ‘Los modos de producción y “reproducción” del texto literario y la noción de apertura’, in Homenaje a Julio Caro Baroja, coord. Manuel Gutiérrez Esteve, Jesús Antonio Cid & Antonio Carreira (Madrid: CIS, 1978), 245–70 (p. 264).

5 Samuel G. Armistead, ‘Contamination and Reconstruction in the Judeo-Spanish Romancero’, in Proceedings of the Twelfth British Conference on Judeo-Spanish Studies, 24–26 June, 2001, ed. Hilary Pomeroy & Michael Alpert (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 83–100 (p. 83).

6 Armistead, ‘Contamination and Reconstruction in the Judeo-Spanish Romancero’, 83.

7 Colin Smith, ‘Introduction’, in Spanish Ballads, ed., with an intro., notes & bibliography, by Colin Smith (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2002 [1^st ed. 1996]), vi–xliv (p. vi).

8 Ramón Menéndez Pidal, La epopeya castellana a través de la literatura española (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1974), 109.

9 Menéndez Pidal, La epopeya castellana a través de la literatura española, 109.

10 See Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Obras de R. Menéndez Pidal, 12 vols (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe 1934–1976), XI (1973), Estudios sobre el romancero, 201. Throughout this study, when referencing the poet of a ballad, unless otherwise specified, I am referring to this anonymous collective.

11 For a different opinion, see Roslyn M. Frank & Joseph Szertics, ‘Doña Lambra y el conflicto familiar en la leyenda de los “Siete infantes de Lara” en las crónicas y en los romances viejos’, Confluencia, 5:2 (1990), 19–26. In their estimation, the negative depiction of Doña Lambra ‘contribuye a que ella aparezca aquí más visiblemente causante de la tragedia familiar que en las crónicas’ (22).

12 Teresa Catarella, ‘Feminine Historicizing in the romancero novelesco’, BHS, LXVII:4 (1990), 331–43 (p. 332).

13 See Colin Smith, ‘On the Ethos of the Romancero viejo’, in Studies of the Spanish and Portuguese Ballad, ed. N. D. Shergold (London: Tamesis/Univ. of Wales Press, 1972), 5–25 (p. 11); and Catarella, ‘Feminine Historicizing in the romancero novelesco’, 331.

14 Ian Michael, ‘Factitious Flowers or Fictitious Fossils? The romances viejos Re-viewed’, in Al que en buen hora naçio. Essays on the Spanish Epic and Ballad in Honour of Colin Smith, ed. Brian Powell, Geoffrey West & Dorothy Severin (Liverpool: Liverpool U. P./MHRA, 1996), 91–105 (p. 101).

15 Catarella, ‘Feminine Historicizing in the romancero novelesco’, 332.

16 Smith, ‘On the Ethos of the Romancero viejo’, 17.

17 See ‘Ya se salen de Castilla’, in Romancero, ed. Paloma Díaz-Mas, preliminary study by Samuel G. Armistead (Barcelona: Crítica, 1994), 56–64 (p. 56, n. 1).

18 In his dictionary of Spanish used between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, Martín Alonso’s Diccionario medieval español. Desde las ‘Glosas Emilianenses’ y ‘Silenses’ (s. 10) hasta el siglo 15, 2 vols (Salamanca: Univ. Pontificia de Salamanca, 1986), I, A–C, lists five entries for ‘amar’: ‘[t]ener amor a personas o cosas’; ‘[q]uerer, tener como amigo’; ‘[q]uerer, tener como cosa propia’; ‘[b]uscar, desear, ansiar’; and ‘[h]onrar’ (280–81).

19 For editions of the two earliest chronistic testimonies of the legend of the Siete infantes de Lara, see Épica medieval española, ed. Carlos Alvar & Manuel Alvar (Madrid: Cátedra, 1997). According to the account preserved in the Estoria de España, Doña Lambra proclaims, ‘[a]gora vet, amigos, qué cavallero tan esforçado es Alvar Sánchez, ca de quantos allí son llegados non pudo ninguno ferir en somo del tablado sinon él solo tan solamientre; et más valió allí él solo que todos los otros’ (180). The version recorded in the Crónica general de España de 1344, however, more closely resembles the ballad: ‘Doña Llambra quando lo oyó, e sopo que su cormano Alvar Sanches lançara tan bien, plógol’ mucho, e con grant plaser que ende ovo dixo aquellos que ý seían con ella que non vedaría su amor a ome tan de pro si non fuese su pariente tan llegado’ (203).

20 Although the exact meaning of Doña Lambra’s insult is unclear, Díaz-Mas posits that it may allude either to Doña Sancha’s perceived lust—seven sons means that she had at least seven sexual encounters—or to the folkloric belief that giving birth to multiple children at once signalled an adulterous relationship (‘Ya se salen de Castilla’, ed. Díaz-Mas, 59, n. 39).

21 ‘Ya se salen de Castilla’, ed. Díaz-Mas, 60, notes 64 & 65.

22 Alison Carberry, ‘Subverted Tradition and Emotional Impact: Female Characterization in the Epic and the Romancero Viejo’, Doctoral dissertation (Boston University, 2013), rightfully observes that Doña Lambra’s threat to convert to Islam ‘could be yet another example of confusion between strong-willed female characters in traditional Spanish ballads, for it is the very same legendary threat made by Doña Urraca when she discovers her father’s plans to deny her a rightful share in the inheritance of his territories’ (50). She also reminds us that this detail calls to mind Jezebel—the biblical queen of Israel who venerated idols, coerced her husband to tolerate her practices and played a central role in their downfall—as well as Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was expelled from Eden for refusing to submit to and obey her husband. All this, in Carberry’s estimation, likely associated such negative female figures with Doña Lambra (47–48).

23 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas (español-portugués-catalán-sefardí), ed., Ramón Menéndez Pidal et al., 17 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 1956–1985), II (1963), Romanceros de los condes de Castilla y de los infantes de Lara, 102 & 122.

24 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 122.

25 In his now classic study, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIV^th and XV^th Centuries (Garden City: Doubleday, 1954 [1^st Dutch ed. 1919]), Johan Huizinga elaborates on the inherent drama and eroticism of similar competitions and indicates that such events ‘serve to express romantic needs too strong for mere literature to satisfy’ and provide an outlet for feelings that cannot be emoted elsewhere (83).

26 To compare these details with those preserved in the Interpolación de la crónica de 1344, see Ramón Menéndez Pidal, La leyenda de los infantes de Lara, 3^rd ed. (Madrid: Espasa, 1971 [1^st ed. 1896]). According to this late fourteenth-century version of the account, Ruy Velázquez declares in his letter to Almanzor that the seven Infantes: ‘desonrraron mal a my e a my muger, por lo qual yo quisiera mas aver reçebido dellos o de otra qualquier persona la muerte que aver reçebido la desonrra que dellos reçebi; quebrantaronme my casa, mataron so el manto de my muger vn ome my vasallo, desonrraron a my muger por que gelo defendia, forçaronle las donzellas, fijas dalgo que con ella estavan, fizieron otras cosas que escrevir vos non podria’ (316).

27 Menéndez Pidal, La leyenda de los infantes de Lara, 6, n. 4.

28 Mercedes Vaquero, ‘Presentación de quejas y lamentos en voz de mujer de la épica hispana’, BHS, LXXXVI:1 (2009), 12–25 (p. 15).

29 Carberry, ‘Subverted Tradition and Emotional Impact’, 51.

30 According to the Fuero de Cuenca, ‘El que mate una paloma de palomar, ya en la villa, ya fuera de ella, o la coja en lazo o en otra trampa, pague cinco sueldos. Por paloma doméstica, diez sueldos’ (Chapter 34, Law 13). Further on, the same law code stipulates that ‘[c]ualquiera que coloque redes o lazos en las ventanas de un palomar o penetre dentro de él, pague trescientos sueldos. Quien lo incendie o destruya, pague otros tantos, si se le puede probar con testigos; pero si no, sálvese con doce vecinos y sea creído’ (Chapter 34, Law 14). For more on these and other pertinent statutes, see El fuero de Cuenca, ed., trad., intro. & notas por Alfredo Valmaña Vicente (Cuenca: Tormo, 1978). It should also be noted that in 1465, following widespread complaints of hunters illicitly destroying dovecotes, the Cortes of León and Castilla ratified a statute declaring that ‘persona ni personas algunas de qual quier estado e condición que sean, no ayan osadia de tomar palomar ni palomas algunas ni les tiren con vallesta ny arco ni piedra ni en otra manera, ni sean osados delas armar con rredes ni lazos no con otra armaca alguna en derredor de donde quiere palomares o palomas’. The law also stipulates that, should someone be found guilty of such conduct, his accoutrements were to be confiscated and he was to pay sixty maravedíes for each dove killed. For a more detailed explanation of the historical context as well as a more complete transcription of King Enrique IV’s laws protecting dovecotes, see F. P. Roldán Morales, Palomares de barro de Tierra de Campos (Valladolid: Caja de Ahorros Provincial de Valladolid, 1983), 20.

31 Carol Anne Evans, ‘A Woman’s Plea for Justice: Las Quejas de Jimena’, Romance Notes, 38:1 (1997), 61–70 (p. 65); S. J. McMullan, ‘Epic, Ballad, Drama: The Mocedades del Cid’, in Belfast Spanish and Portuguese Papers, ed. Paul S. N. Russell-Gebbett, Nicholas Grenville Round & Arthur H. Terry (Belfast: The Queen’s Univ. of Belfast, 1979), 123–43 (p. 137); Edith Randam Rogers, The Perilous Hunt: Symbols in Hispanic and European Balladry (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1980), 15–19.

32 In her analysis of the nearly identical lines comprising ‘Día era de los reyes’, Carol Anne Evans, reaches the same conclusion about Doña Jimena’s accusation against Rodrigo Díaz (‘A Woman’s Plea’, 64, 65, 67–68 & 69).

33 Alfonso X, Las siete partidas del rey Don Alfonso el Sabio, cotejadas con varios códices antiguos por la Real Academia de la Historia, 3 vols (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1807), III, Partida VII, Titulo XX, Ley I, 662–63 (p. 662).

34 Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, II, Partida II, Titulo VI, Ley II, 42–43 (p. 42).

35 Reyna Pastor, ‘Para una historia social de la mujer hispano-medieval: problemática y puntos de vista’, in La condición de la mujer en la Edad Media. Actas del Coloquio celebrado en la Casa de Velázquez, del 5 al 7 de noviembre de 1984, coord. Yves-René Fonquerne & Alfonso Esteban (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez/Univ. Complutense de Madrid, 1986), 187–214 (p. 207).

36 Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, II, Partida II, Titulo XIV, Ley IV, 129–30 (p. 129; my emphasis).

37 Ricardo Córdoba de la Llave, El instinto diabólico: agresiones sexuales en la Castilla medieval (Córdoba: Servicio de Publicaciones, Univ. de Córdoba, 1994), 48.

38 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 122, n. 6.

39 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 128.

40 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 126, indicates that San Pedro’s poem appears in the Cancionero general de 1551 and begins: ‘Yo me estava en pensamiento en essa mi heredad / las fuerças de mi desseo mal amenazado me han / que me cortarían la vida con dolor de gravedad’.

41 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 128–29.

42 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 127.

43 Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas, ed. Menéndez Pidal et al., II, 129.

44 Carberry, ‘Subverted Tradition and Emotional Impact’, 53.

45 Pablo Ancos García, ‘Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en Día era de los Reyes y Cabalga Diego Laínez’, Lemir, 2 (1998), n.p.; available at <http://parnaseo.uv.es/Lemir/Revista/Revista2/Mocedades/Mocedades.html> (accessed 21 December 2021).

46 The most extensive of the three extant ballads narrating Doña Jimena’s complaint is ‘Día era de los reyes’, which was preserved in the Cancionero de 1550. It most closely resembles the romances in the Siete infantes cycle and is the only one in which there is an explicit threat of rape (the others include euphemistic allusions to it). For a useful synoptic view of the ballads treating Doña Jimena’s complaint, see Alberto Montaner, ‘Las quejas de doña Jimena: formación y desarrollo de un tema en la épica y el romancero’, in Actas del II Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval (Segovia, del 5 al 19 de octubre de 1987), ed. José Manuel Lucía Megías, Paloma Gracias Alonso & Carmen Martín Daza, 2 vols (Alcalá de Henares: Univ. de Alcalá de Henares, 1991), II, 475–507 (pp. 491–94).

47 Bénichou, ‘El casamiento del Cid’, 326.

48 Bénichou, ‘El casamiento del Cid’, 326, n. 24.

49 Catalán, ‘Los modos de producción y “reproducción” del texto literario’, 264.

50 Ancos García brings into question Doña Jimena’s accusation because the poem neither narrates the events she describes nor offers anything to suggest that Rodrigo did what she claims. Heavily basing his evaluation of the maiden’s character on her representation in the Mocedades de Rodrigo and in other ballads, he argues that she falsely portrays herself as Rodrigo’s victim to obtain an advantageous marriage. In his view, her accusations are ‘una invención con la que provocar las dudas del rey y conseguir un objetivo preestablecido: el matrimonio con Rodrigo’ (‘Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en Día era de los Reyes y Cabalga Diego Laínez’, n.p.).

51 See Evans, ‘A Woman’s Plea’, 64; and Ancos García, ‘Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en Día era de los Reyes y Cabalga Diego Laínez’, n.p.

52 McMullan, ‘Epic, Ballad, Drama’, 137.

53 Montaner, ‘Las quejas de doña Jimena’, 484.

54 Ancos García, ‘Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en Día era de los Reyes y Cabalga Diego Laínez’, n.p.

55 In his insightful analysis, Montaner acknowledges the challenge of interpreting the exact sense of the verb matárame in the line ‘matárame un pagezico’ given the many developments the Spanish language had undergone up to and through Spain’s literary Golden Age. To lend support to his argument that Rodrigo only threatens to kill Jimena’s servant, he interprets matárame to be a mere possibility and not an event that indeed occurred (‘Las quejas de doña Jimena’, 505, n. 24). I accept the explanation offered by Rafael Lapesa who indicates that the use of the imperfect subjunctive in the romancero viejo, unlike in most other literary genres, maintained its original meaning of the indicative pluperfect (that is, ‘había matado’ or ‘had killed’); see his Historia de la lengua española (Madrid: Gredos, 1981 [1^st ed. 1942]), 403.

56 Montaner, ‘Las quejas de doña Jimena’, 484 & 487.

57 Montaner, ‘Las quejas de doña Jimena’, 487.

58 Ancos García, ‘Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en Día era de los Reyes y Cabalga Diego Laínez’, n.p.

59 Evans, ‘A Woman’s Plea’, 68.

60 Córdoba de la Llave, El instinto diabólico, 44.

61 For details, see Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, III, Partida VII, Titulo XX, Ley III, 663–64; as well as Heath Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1984), who notes that in several towns of Castile and León, ‘it is plain that marriage to a rape victim was a way [for her attacker] to avoid punishment and for a woman and her family to erase the humiliating disgrace’ (186).

62 Córdoba de la Llave, El instinto diabólico, 44.

63 Córdoba de la Llave, El instinto diabólico, 46.

64 Bénichou, ‘El casamiento del Cid’, 327.

65 Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho, ed. Michael Gerli, 2^nd ed. (Madrid: Cátedra, 1981 [1^st ed. 1979]), 38֪–42.

66 Montaner, ‘Las quejas de doña Jimena’, 487.

67 Montaner, ‘Las quejas de doña Jimena’, 487.

68 Ancos García, ‘Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en Día era de los Reyes y Cabalga Diego Laínez’, n.p.

69 Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 21.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.